Google vs. Microsoft For Personal Productivity
Hello readers,
Let me start off with the summary to make it easy for those who are busy.
⚡ Summary
Overall, you can’t go wrong with either platform. You can be sure that both companies are great in terms of security. Keep in mind that these companies are giants and have been working on productivity apps for quite a long time. Microsoft has been there longer because of Microsoft Office. I would advise you to try out both their suites for one or two weeks and find out which one is best for you. I must remind you that I personally use Google suite for my personal productivity, but I also have the Microsoft 365 family subscription for my family members. Even if Google collects a lot of personal data, Google provides a better way than Microsoft to export data in case you need to get out of its ecosystem. This was my top reason to go the Google route.
If you’re still curious, please read the rest of this article.
Introduction
All right let’s get started! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe! I’ve recently taken an interest towards blogging and productivity and following the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology for my personal and office use. I wanted to share my productivity workflow and what apps I use for my GTD workflow. The next series of posts will mostly be about productivity.
In this post, I’ll compare two of the best ecosystems to create a productivity workflow and review their apps. Microsoft and Google have done an excellent job developing cross platform apps that are fast and feature rich. I’m using an Android device and a Windows PC but the apps are cross-platform so you should be good to use it on any device.
Security
Straight up, let me tell you that both these platforms are very secure. Microsoft and Google have entire teams dedicated to security research. You can rest assured that your data is safe and they’re doing an excellent job fixing security holes. Hence, I’ll not talk about security in this post.
Today, I’ll review these types of apps on each ecosystem:
- Calendar
- Notes
- Tasks
- Storage
Google Apps
Here’s a list of Google apps from their Workspace product that focus on productivity:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Keep
- Google Drive
- Google Tasks — Gmail sidebar and iOS/Android apps only.
Microsoft apps
Here’s a list of Microsoft apps from their suite:
Gmail and Outlook are two of the most popular email services available and provide great integration with a lot of different applications. You can create an account for free in Gmail and Outlook. While Gmail provides you 15 GB of storage to start with, Outlook provides 5 GB of storage.
If you don’t want to regularly clean up your inbox and move emails around, Gmail is the better option due to more storage. It also integrates well with Google Tasks, Keep, Calendar. You can add apps outside of the Google ecosystem such as Trello boards by installing the app from the sidebar. However, if you’re a fan of Outlook because you’ve been using it at work, or just a fan of the Microsoft Office suite, you’ll find that Outlook.com would suit you better. You can schedule events, create Skype meetings, add To-do tasks from Outlook and integrate with OneDrive like Google and Google Drive. You won’t find either service lacking in features for everyday use.
Both email services can read and sync emails from each other. I found Gmail to have better spam detection and better organization. For instance, Microsoft has two tabs — focused and other, while Google categorizes mail into Promotions, Updates, Forums and Primary which I found better for my needs. Microsoft has a neat feature that aggregates all newsletters and offers a settings page where you can unsubscribe from newsletters. This is missing in Gmail though. Gmail needs it badly to help clean up old emails especially as you’re approaching your storage limit.
Both mail services provide a sidebar to create tasks, calendar events and notes. You can also create meeting invites right from the email page. For Google, it’s Google Meet and for Microsoft, it’s Skype. Note that Microsoft has a separate service called Teams which, as the name indicates, is better suited for teams. For personal use, Skype works fine.
You can customize both email clients with plenty of themes and colors. In terms of the UI, I found Microsoft Outlook to be clean and organized, with a professional look if that’s something you’re looking for. Google has a lot of things going on, especially if you have a lot of labels and emails lying around. However, the search functionality is better in Google. You get colors in Microsoft Outlook and assign it to specific categories. Gmail doesn’t have the “Categorize” or color feature. Outlook also has a dark mode that Outlook applies within email messages while Google doesn’t.
I also found that if you’re cleaning up your email, Google is usually better because it has the “Filter messages like this” option that I frequently use.
In terms of speed, both are fast and are well suited for practical purposes.
For the mobile app, Gmail comes preinstalled in Android devices and is great to use. It’s fast, doesn’t consume a lot of battery and can be used to synchronize mails from Exchange server as well which will be useful for enterprises. Outlook has a fantastic email app as well, providing both Calendar and Email functionality in the same app. In fact, Microsoft has created an ecosystem within iOS and Android with top rated apps in both platforms. You can connect to your OneDrive as well as Google Drive from within the Outlook app. You can create tasks, add to OneNote, and do a lot of productive stuff in Outlook. Both Gmail and Outlook are fantastic in the mobile world. You won’t go wrong with either of these.
📆 Calendar
I don’t really use many of the calendar features that Outlook and Gmail provide. For me, both seem equally good to use. I personally use Google Calendar because I also use Gmail and Google’s calendar integrates well with its ecosystem. For my productivity setup, I use Notion as my task manager and use Google Calendar to keep track of scheduled and/or recurring events. In my Notion setup, I have a “Scheduled — One Off” list and a “Scheduled — Recurring” list. While Notion does provide the option to have reminders, Notion doesn’t have a feature to setup recurring events. Between Google Calendar and Microsoft can set recurring reminders and I really don’t see a difference between Microsoft and Google.
One thing I DO want to mention though, is related to data exporting. Microsoft makes it difficult to get out of its ecosystem. We don’t have an effective way of exporting data from Microsoft’s online version of these apps. For example, let’s say you’re on the free tier of Outlook or Hotmail. You don’t have access to its Outlook client app. You won’t be able to export any calendar or To-Do data in a useful format. Unless you pay of Microsoft 365, you can’t install its apps and hence, you can’t export your data. This was one of the main reasons I avoided the Office suite. Google however provides a ton of options to export your data including Mail, Calendar, Tasks, etc. all from its web app.
📝 Notes
Google and Microsoft have taken different approaches when it comes to note taking. Microsoft has a full-blown note taking application in OneNote that contains a ton of features and rivals' services like Evernote and Notion. Notebooks are especially useful when you’re in a university and want to organize notes from your classes. You have great flexibility into what you put in your notes. Google Keep on the other hand is limited in terms of features but is quick and is good for taking quick notes. You can create labels, lists, drawings, and reminders but is nowhere near as feature rich as OneNote.
Both OneNote and Google Keep are integrated well in their respective email services. OneNote presents a quick notes section where you can quickly note down things from your email, so it doesn’t have to load the full set of notebooks you have. Google Keep loads all your notes on Gmail’s sidebar.
I use Google Keep to “capture” tasks in my GTD system because Notion loads slow when in mobile. I usually capture everything in Google Keep and transfer tasks to Notion end of each day.
💿 Storage
Google Drive and OneDrive are popular storage services which provide a secure and resilient way of storing your files online. Google provides 15 GB of free storage to start with while OneDrive provides 5 GB. Both have good paid plans as well. Since Microsoft has been doing MS Office for longer than Google has, their OneDrive pricing for families is better than Google. For instance, with Microsoft 365 Family, you pay $100 per year to include a family of 5 people + 1 (yourself) who get the MS Office suite + 1 TB of data per person. That’s 6 TB of data for $100! That’s impressive! Google on the other hand gives you 2 TB of data for $100 per year that you can share with 5 others + 1 (yourself).
Buy Microsoft 365 Family subscription here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-365-family/cfq7ttc0k5dm
Buy Google One subscription here: https://one.google.com/about/plans
I have the Microsoft 365 Family because my father uses MS Office extensively and I get to keep 1TB of storage for myself.
Keep in mind though that with Google’s plan, your storage is counted across products like Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Photos, etc. This means you can have unlimited emails. However, with Microsoft, you get a mailbox with 50GB of space. If you exceed 50 GB, you can’t send or receive emails unless you clear them.
✅ Tasks
No contest here — Microsoft is the clear winner. Microsoft To-Do is a stunning app that works across all platforms and has a wonderful UI. It works extremely well across Microsoft’s suite of products. You can create tasks from emails. Flagging an email adds a task to To-Do. It has support for labels (using hashtags), lists and list groups. You can implement GTD with Microsoft To-Do easily.
Google’s Tasks app is available in iOS and Android and is integrated with Gmail on the web. It doesn’t have a full range of features which can be frustrating to implement GTD with. I’d personally recommend Microsoft To-Do. The only caveat again is with data exporting. You simply don’t have an effective way of exporting your Microsoft data and you’re locked into its ecosystem. I just avoided that from the beginning so that when I have tons of tasks, I don’t have to worry about exporting them. I use Notion now as my task manager and Google Keep as my capture utility.
Try out Microsoft To-Do as it’s an excellent app that may very suit your needs. Even if you’re not in the Microsoft ecosystem, To-Do is still a great app. Check it out!
If you got till here, I really appreciate your patience and thank you for reading! Thank you so much for spending the time to read this article. This is a long post, so I really appreciate you spending the time to read it.
